Li-related News/Articles/Reports, page-9204

Well Rob, I'll make it very easy for you:

The YoY EV production is increasing so more Li is used than last year
Planned projects are not getting funding in this environment and those in ramp up (like AGY's) are pressing pause
Yet, the Li spot continues to fall

My diagnosis: China is withdrawing demand as they are sourcing from domestic Li miners and Africa. This will continue. The oversupply is China sourcing their own stuff and exiting the market. The narrative of 'more mines online' is just so biased that doesn't make sense.

It is more expensive for China to source from expensive projects but the tech advantage they have absorbs the extra costs in sourcing Li. At the same time, they are out to buy as many miners as they can.

How to get out of this: only if western EV OEMs build their battery supply chains and increasingly compete with China in battery manufacturing, we will see a 'normal' Li commodity market. Otherwise it will always be skewed with China having the upper hand.

I am confident at least the EU manufacturers will react to this, despite many Tier1s downplaying EVs in favour of hybrids. This downplaying has become the short term strategy in a desperate move to block the influx of new producers with the help of Brussels and their rising of tariffs. Also the industry incumbents are applying extreme pressure (oil industry) with constant bombardment of negative news about EVs (fires, lack of chargers, expensive insurance, etc). This will work for a year, maybe two, but by late 2020's there won't be many arguments not to buy an electric car.

My conclusion: No clear bet from EU OEMs in favour of EVs = AGY is dead